


Become

by All_I_need



Series: Evolve [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, S4 fix-it, Water, companion piece to Evolve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 07:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9592100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/All_I_need/pseuds/All_I_need
Summary: Companion piece to "Evolve".Sometimes Sherlock wonders if John truly understands.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, uhm, I did not actually intend to write this but that has never stopped me before. A massive THANK YOU to everyone who has read and commented or left kudos on "Evolve". This is for all of you.

_“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”_  
_― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_

  
Looking back, Sherlock can pinpoint the exact moment when it all started.

Looking back, Sherlock can tell the precise moment the first drop of sentiment hit him, and every drop afterwards, until the gentle dribble turned into a steady rain and, finally, a downpour.

Looking around him, all he sees is an ocean of sentiment and if anyone asked him how that happened, he could tell them about every single drop in it.

*****

It started, of course, at St. Bart's Hospital. Sherlock knows that this doesn't make much sense. People don't meet someone and think "Oh yes, you will be important" and proceed to remember that very first meeting so very clearly. But Sherlock isn't 'people' and he remembers because the door opened and an army doctor with a psychosomatic limp walked into the room and the constant whirring of Sherlock's mind stood still for one precious moment.

His mind stood still, settled down, and for that one moment Sherlock was completely and utterly one-hundred percent present in the here and now. No worries about his experiment, no impatience for Molly to bring him his coffee, no curiousity about what the sample beneath the microscope's glaring light might tell him about a vicious murder. Not a single stray thought about anything beyond the stranger and the precise distance between them.

That had never happened before.

And he had known, right away, that here was someone extraordinary, someone worth knowing for the simple sake of enjoying their company rather than any practical use they might have. Of course John had turned out to have lots of uses, oh yes, but Sherlock hadn't know that. Not then. Not yet.

Looking back, he knows that this was the first drop.

After that came more. Dinners and chases and shared laughter and caught murderers and giggling at crime scenes, quiet nights in and days spent breaking into secret military bases. A steady drip-drip-drip, picking up as time passed until the dripping became a downpour.

*****

The worst thing, Sherlock thinks, is that he didn't even know he was standing in the rain until he was already drenched to the bone.

*****

He still remembers the moment, the precise drop, of realisation.

He was in Switzerland at the time, two months after his supposed 'death', sitting outside a café, ostensibly people-watching and enjoying the summer sun but in reality waiting for his mark to leave the house on the opposite side of the market place, when his attention had been arrested by two men a few tables over.

They sat next to each other at a small angle, looking in the same direction but turned towards one another all the same. One of them had been sipping his coffee while the other was engrossed in his phone. They had sat there for at least half an hour, not talking, just comfortable in each other's quiet company, and Sherlock had felt oddly reminded of himself and John for no discernable reason.

And then the man had put his phone away, turned around, and wiped a stray bit of foam off the other man's lips and even from three tables away Sherlock had been able to see the way those lips had pressed a tiny kiss to the man's thumb and Sherlock had thought _'Oh'._

_Oh._

He had abandoned his watch then, because surrounded by hundreds of people in the warm August sun he had felt unbearably cold and lonely, the weight of it dragging him below the surface and forcing him to finally realise that he'd been up to his neck in water for quite some time.

*****

Coming home felt like breaking through the surface and taking his first gasp of air, his lungs aching.

In contrast, seeing John in a posh restaurant with a ring box had been like realising that the struggle to reach the surface has left him with not enough power in his arms and legs to keep him there and that drowning was inevitable.

*****

He didn't think twice about jumping head-first into a bonfire. After all, what danger does fire pose to a drowning man?

After that came the storm. Waves of sentiment, tossing him back and forth between them. Hope, resignation, pain, jealousy, hope, resignation, pain, jealousy, hope ... he never wondered what drowning might feel like but is sure he wouldn't have imagined this.

*****

He is in treacherous waters now. He can never tell how far it is to the shore or how deep the water goes. He watches as the shipwreck of John's life goes up in flames and sinks beneath the surface, leaving nothing but debris in its wake, and wonders what kind of monsters it might disturb at the bottom of the ocean.

As it turns out, one of them is himself, a giant squid reaching and grasping for John with all eight arms at once and not enough self-preservation to remain in the dark, unseen.

*****

He tries to be circumspect, tries to approach the topic sideways by asking John other questions first.

"Do you think I'm very like her?" really means "Do you think I'm a psychopath? Do you think I am incapable of feeling, the way she is?"

But of course John doesn't.

"Would you have forgiven me for shooting Mycroft?" Sherlock doesn't actually need or want an answer to that one. He just wants John to know that it was never a question. Even Mycroft himself knew immediately, understood and accepted it without batting an eye. There is no possible situation in which Sherlock would have even considered shooting John. That alone should be hint enough.

But it isn't. Not to John, who thinks himself expendable, as if Sherlock could bear to live without him. 

So Sherlock asks the one question that really matters, the one question that has been burning a hole into his tongue from the day of Mary's funeral:

"How long do you need me to wait?"

He will never forget the look on John's face as he asks, the surprise and the confusion and the precise moment where John realises that this has been coming for a long time. He will never forget the tiny flare of warmth in John's gaze for as long as he lives.

Hope.

It's the driftwood he clings to, wondering which shore he'll end up on.

*****

Sometimes, Sherlock wonders if John truly understands.

It certainly seems so most of the time. When Sherlock asks if he is ready, John knows what he is really asking and answers accordingly.

But does he truly understand? Does he know that every "I don't know" and every "Not yet" gives Sherlock hope, keeps him alive until he asks again? Does he realise that these few words are all that keep Sherlock safe from the maelstrom of sentiment that is threatening to drag him down at any given moment?

_"I don't know. Not yet."_

Sherlock has learnt to cherish these words. "I don't know" is not "No" and "Not yet" is not "Never". 

Not knowing is okay. Not being ready quite yet is also okay. Both imply a future of knowing, of being ready eventually.

It is all he needs to know to get through the day, to keep treading water. He wraps these words around himself and settles in to wait.

The years and prolonged exposure to John have mellowed him. He finds himself playing childish games with Rosie, tucking away every laugh he startles out of her inside his mind palace where no one can ever take it from him. 

He thinks he would destroy all of London to protect John Watson's daughter from harm. Considering his past actions, he doesn't dare think of what he would do to protect her father. He hopes the world will never have cause to find out that the name of the apocalypse may just be Sherlock Holmes.

Instead, he tries harder to act like the man he has become for John.

He writes lullabies for Rosie and plays them on his violin. He writes lullabies for John, too, and doesn't quite dare to explain the difference to him.

Every now and then, he finds himself making tea or even dinner, the domesticity odd but comforting. His days never used to have any discernable pattern to them. Now they are firmly centered around Rosie's mealtimes and bedtimes and - the most important part of the day - bathtime.

Sherlock has no idea when or how they ended up sharing the role of fatherhood to a little girl he is in no way related to, but bathtime belongs to him now. He can hear John rummaging around in the kitchen, doing the washing up after dinner. The dishes need cleaning and so does Rosie. Since John can't do both at the same time, Sherlock finds himself in the role of designated bath-giver. The poetic irony of him putting John's daughter in water doesn't escape him, but the tub is shallow and these waters are clear and easy to navigate. There is no risk of drowning.

He uses the time to get to know this little human, so helpless and trusting. There is a growth table in his head now that gets updated every evening, a list of new accomplishments right next to it. He never realised they learned so fast. He never realised they were quite so fragile or that one of their tiny hands wrapped around his finger has more power than physics could ever hope to explain.

Rosie loves baths. Unsurprising, given how much poetry John has waxed on the subject over the years; she must get it from somewhere. Sherlock doesn't put up candles - the combination of a baby and open fire is frankly terrifying - but she doesn't seem to think her bathtime lacking. He teaches her about buoyancy instead, watches her hone her fine-motor skills as she tries to grab the toys bobbing on the water.

He looks at her and sees all the little things that make her John's. Her eyes, for example. He would know that tone of blue anywhere. Every time he notices another detail, he feels his chest constrict and the tsunami swell, towering above his head, ready to come crashing down.

But not yet.

John is sad and grieving and heartbroken and missing his wife and feeling guilty for almost-but-not-quite cheating on her and Sherlock can do nothing but be there and wait for him to recover and help look after Rosie.

Sherlock tries to teach her speech.

It has occured to him that having her first word be "Daddy" or some variation thereof might cheer John up, so he tells her at every opportunity. It is surprisingly difficult to teach her without John noticing - it would be easier if he could just point at him and repeat the word until she realises there is a connection there.

Five years ago, the thought would never have occured to him. Five years ago, he would not have known what to do with a baby, let alone voluntarily bath one almost every night or play with one just for the sake of childish laughter.

Sometimes Sherlock wonders if John truly understands what he has done to him, how much he has changed him.

If the past five years have taught him anything at all, it is that he will do absolutely anything to keep John in his life. That includes faking his own death and letting himself be tortured just so he can come back. It includes organising John's wedding and ignoring the dull ache in his chest every step of the way. It includes helping him reconcile with his pregnant wife after she shot Sherlock in the chest and quite literally killed him, if only for a couple of minutes.

It includes nearly overdosing on drugs and letting a serial killer attempt to murder him to drag John out of his grief-induced haze.

And now it includes bathing John's daughter as he waits for her father to finally, please, finally, understand that every one of these things is a declaration of love and always has been.

Sometimes Sherlock wonders if John truly understands how hard it is not to open his mouth and just say it, how much he struggles not to reach out and grasp his hand in the mute hope that he won't pull away.

He wonders, sometimes, if John realises that Sherlock is aching in ways he never could have imagined five years ago, that Sherlock is gasping for air, that Sherlock is going out of his mind counting raindrops, replaying every instance John ever touched him and wishing he had more memories to go on. Wishing he had more reality to go on to keep him afloat.

The hug they shared in their sitting room some months ago is seared into his memory and he still doesn't know if John noticed him kissing the top of his head, just because he could and might not have another chance. He dares anyone to be thrown a lifebelt and not reach for it.

He hopes John at least realises he will not suffer any more inane questions about Irene Adler. God knows where she and her girlfriend have gone off to; he certainly doesn't want to know and has no desire to ever see her again.

Sherlock sometimes thinks that he has suffered quite enough but knows he is willing to suffer more if only John will finally understand.

*****

He paces the sitting room while he waits for John to put Rosie to bed, already planning ahead for the next day. There is no case and the weather report seems favourable for an outing. New input is important, the stimulation of the brain in these early months and years. He can't wait until Rosie is old enough to help him with experiments. But until then ... baby steps.

John's steps sound on the stairs and Sherlock turns towards the sitting room door.

"Ah, John," Sherlock says as soon as he walks in. "I've been thinking we should take her to the zoo tomorrow. Tuesdays are statistically days with fewer visitors which will allow even the shy animals to emerge from their hiding places and we can teach her to identi-"

"Now," John says.

Sherlock stops mid-word, mid-breath, mid-thought. He thinks he might have misheard.

"What?"

"Now," John repeats, closing the door to the hallway behind him. "I'm ready now."

Sherlock stares at him, feeling rather like he got doused by an unexpected bucket full of warm water. He's left dripping wet and mildly confused as to why.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Why now?" He has to ask because a frantic search through the past twenty-four hours of his mind palace shows no hint of him doing anything out of the ordinary that might have triggered John's decision.

John shrugs. "Just because. I'm ready now. Tell me."

Sherlock crosses the room and each step is a surprise - he expects a wobbly surface, like walking on water, so the carpet over hardwood is unexpected even though it shouldn't be.

He comes to a halt right in front of John, much closer than necessary to be heard, much closer than he usually dares. He raises both hands, slowly, carefully, afraid John might change his mind.

John stands up straighter and his gaze never wavers from Sherlock's.

Sherlock cradles his face in his hands, feels the beginnings of John's stubble and the soft warmth of his skin. His heart feels like it might beat out of his chest, swollen to triple its usual size with all the love he has been holding in. He lets the last mask slip from his face so John can have a look at this ocean that has his name written in its currents.

And while John is still grappling with all that he sees, Sherlock tells him.

"I love you, John Hamish Watson."

John lets out a sigh that threatens to turn into a sob halfway through and Sherlock thinks that there is quite enough water already.

And then he stops thinking as John's hands come up, mirroring Sherlock's own, and he lets his thumbs stroke along Sherlock's cheekbones like he can't believe Sherlock is real.

When John speask, there is wonder in his voice, but also certainty. "I'm yours."

The ocean settles, becomes still and quiet, glinting silver in the light of the sun. Sherlock stares and stares and stares and doesn't breathe.

And John says: "I love you, too."

Sherlock can't help it - he makes a tiny, choked noise and falls into him.

And this and this and _this_ , this is what he has been waiting for. This is John's mouth on his and John's soft, thin lips and John's hot breath and clever tongue and right here, with John breathing into his mouth, Sherlock understands that he will never drown in this ocean.

John will always keep him afloat, a safe harbour in the stormy sea of Sherlock's sentiment.

Looking back, Sherlock can pinpoint the exact moment when it all started.

And later that night he starts telling John about each and every drop that swept him away.

>   
>  **The End.**

**Author's Note:**

> There's a multi-chapter fic in the works that will be light and fluffy and take place even before S3, so stay tuned!


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